


In the Garden Sleeps a Messenger

by AngelinaVansen (catherineflowers)



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Mutiny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 10:03:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14788427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/AngelinaVansen
Summary: Set in an AU where Voyager takes the full 70 years to get home. Janeway realises there is a plot against her captaincy.





	In the Garden Sleeps a Messenger

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the early 2000s. 
> 
> Some notes to explain the setting:
> 
> In this AU, Voyager takes the full seventy years to get home, but Seven doesn't die. She IS married to Chakotay though. So, basically, Janeway is still a Captain, but is about the same age as Admiral Janeway was in Endgame and they are still in the Delta Quadrant. 
> 
> Warnings for dark content.

**1\. How I Came To Hate Voyager**

Today I heard a whisper. Ensign Kinneas, sitting in the messhall, muttering with his friends about the Captain.

A couple of days ago, you see, I let my ship get in a lot of trouble. I scared a lot of people. I took a shuttle, took a dignitary of the planet Balamb hostage. All I wanted was safe passage through their space. But I didn't want negotiations, procrastinations. Lately I have come to realise just how little of my life I will get to spend on Earth.

I got safe passage, of course. But my actions caused something of a stir among my crew. I know Chakotay wasn't happy. B'Elanna wouldn't meet my eyes. Seven would, but her stare was full of contempt. Since then, I hear a lot of whispers, even from the junior officers.

I think they think I've lost my marbles. I've been making a lot more of these types of decisions lately. Rash, reckless decisions, decisions that have minimal chances of success. They are worrying that in the future, I won't be fit to keep command. 

I also know that some of my senior staff have been holding meetings without me. 

I know this because as always, Tuvok is my spy. He takes surveillance devices into these secret conferences, and I listen from my quarters or my Ready Room. Mostly, they discuss my actions, debate my mental health, much as the rest of the crew do.

Some of the things my senior staff say make me laugh. Predictably, Tom Paris tried to blame my degrading mental state on a lack of sex. I think his exact words were:

"What Janeway needs is to get into the sack and hold buttocks for a while."

I laughed for a day about that, on and off. I'm not worried about Paris, not at all. Nor about Torres. She rarely says much in these meetings. I don't think she's all that comfortable conspiring against me right now.

I'm not worried about Kim, either, although he's vociferous enough. I know little Harry doesn't have the stomach to try and take command of my ship. I can still make him whimper with one of my patented glares. 

Chakotay, too, hasn't got the balls he was born with, even though he's the figurehead of this operation.

No, it's Mrs. Chakotay that I'm the most concerned about. Seven of Nine. That woman talks the talk and boy ... does she walk the walk, as well. She's got every one of my senior staff wrapped around her tubules.

I admire her. She's blunt, charismatic, and she doesn't take any bullshit from them. The kind of leader I never was, even before I came down with a bad case of the crazies. I was always too plagued by self-doubt, always too ready to listen to my officers. 

I think Seven realises what I never did. All these people are lost souls. They don't need a Captain. They need a Messiah.

Tuvok agrees; Seven's dangerous to me. He's been pushing me to act on this for months. The word mutiny hasn't arisen yet, but it's behind everything they say in those meetings now. They'd prefer to term it "unfit for command" of course. Whatever gets them through.

Now, though, now I think I might be ready to agree with Tuvok. I think it's time to go to phase two. Everyone's concerned about me now, not just those who know me best. Even lowly plasma engineers like Mr. Kinneas have opinions about the way I do things. I can't have that. I have to find out just how far this thing is going.

At 1700, I summon Tuvok to the Ready Room, and instruct him to install surveillance devices in the quarters of my senior officers. He assures me they will be ready by the time I come off-shift.

I want to see if these whispers have bigger, louder brothers.

**2\. A Slice Of The Beast**

I come back to my quarters and watch Paris taking a shower. The images are very good: I had no idea Tuvok had such sophisticated equipment on board.

Paris looks good naked, for a man of his age who sits at the conn all day. I sit and watch him, thinking about what it might be like to get into the sack and hold HIS buttocks for a while. Not an unappealing thought. Then I catch myself and laugh. It's quite ridiculous.

B'Elanna is quite entertaining, too. After a stressful day in engineering, I had imagined she would need a little relaxation. Instead, she exercises like a mad thing: stomach crunches, squat thrusts, lunges, all in neat little sets of twelve. Who would have known?

Funniest of all, though, is dear Mr. Kim. He gets his girlfriend, the very austere Crewman Quistis, to tie him to the dining table blindfolded, for several hours. She lets him pee in a cup, then makes him drink it. During this time, she writes reports, polishes her boots, washes her hair. 

Chakotay and Seven are out late tonight. They have holodeck time reserved, the recording of which I will get tomorrow after Tuvok's regular security round-up. I expect it's quite a dull affair. I can't imagine them engaged in wild, kinky sex that knocks either of their socks off, really. I expect they are far too civil and elegant.

I watch their teenage daughter Jasmine come and go for most of the night, changing clothes and bathing. Jasmine has a lovely body, like her mother, but Chakotay's colouring. She is intense, serious and passionate like both of them. Tuvok tells me her studies are important to her. Well, there aren't many teenage boys to distract her here. Eventually, she goes out somewhere and stays out.

When Chakotay and Seven do eventually return, they are in sports clothes. Hoverball, perhaps, but not Velocity. I can't see Seven playing THAT any more. She is in a foul mood, and Chakotay doesn't look very happy either, although it's difficult to tell.

She is bug-eyed and enraged, stomping around their quarters with her hair all sweaty and dishevelled. She doesn't yell at him, though. Clearly their marriage is one where frustrations like this get bottled up for years.

He sits down on the sofa, looking at the floor between his feet, equally silent.

She replicates a drink, something thick and beige. I expect it is something of nutritional value rather than something alcoholic. I am on the edge of my seat.

"Annie, I'm not sure," Chakotay says at last. "I think the timing's wrong."

So he calls her by her human name in private.

Seven looks as though she's just caught the scent of something particularly foul. "The timing is perfect," she states.

Now I am intrigued. Obviously this is the cause of the tension. 

"Come on," Chakotay pleads with her. "It's Prixin, for God's sake. You know how the crew feels about Prixin ..."

"All the more reason," she says stubbornly. 

"It's the Talaxian celebration of family, the time when Voyager celebrates closeness and togetherness. How do you think our family is going to feel when we put Granny in a rest home?"

"Grateful," Seven replies simply, locking her eyes on his like lasers.

Granny? It takes a moment for the reference to sink in. Then it dawns on me. They are talking about me, about the very thing I am listening for, and they haven't been home twenty minutes.

I have to admit, "Granny" hurts a lot more than Tom's remarks about my chastity. Particularly when Chakotay's older than I am.

"The timing is perfect," Seven says again. "There won't be another opportunity like it."

Chakotay says nothing to that for a long time. He looks nauseous while Seven's eyes drill holes right through him. Eventually, he nods.

Seven smiles grimly. "I will speak with the Doctor," she says.

So that's that, then. She's taken that last step, and Chakotay's not opposed. I laugh to myself in the silence of my living room, wondering whatever happened to the man who swore to stay by my side, doing whatever he could to make my burden lighter. I wonder if he even remembers saying that now.

I watch the two of them as they shower and change, in virtual silence. Chakotay looks a broken man, barely looking up from the deck. He goes to bed, and Seven leaves for the cargo bay, to regenerate.

I switch security channels on the monitor to watch her.

**3\. Two Weeks Before Your Wedding**

She steps into her alcove and turns outward, relaxing her features as regeneration robs her of her consciousness. The circular plasma screen above her head outlines her in its sick, flat, Borg green. The halo of the damned.

Years ago, I used to watch her when she regenerated, for hours on end. I don't remember what I thought about. Maybe it was soothing or calming for me. Maybe I philosophised about whether or not she dreamed of electric sheep. Maybe my thoughts were less than pure.

It seems very long ago.

It was in the cargo bay that she told me of her intention to marry.

"Chakotay and I will require our shoreleave on Vargas together," she had said.

"Oh?" I had asked.

"We're getting married," she had said. "You know that."

In truth, I had known it. They had told everyone else. But for some reason, Seven had preferred to pretend she had already broken the news, that the error was mine.

I had smiled, and arranged the shore leave.

But then, two weeks before the wedding, I slept with the bride.

They were having a party on the holodeck to celebrate, a formal-attire party for the entire crew that lasted all day, to accommodate people's shifts. Chakotay wore a dinner jacket, a bow-tie. Seven was dressed in a long, figure-hugging black velvet dress, a single garnet at her throat. I remember thinking as I saw her that she was far too beautiful.

I remember chiding myself for the thought. Thinking I must be working too hard.

I greeted them, dressed in my dress uniform, which was old and a little tight across the belly. Seven looked at me with slightly dizzy eyes. I had wondered if she'd been drinking.

I danced with Tuvok, with Kim, and then with Chakotay. Seven watched me all three times. At first I'd wondered if she was jealous; there was something implacable and Borg about her gaze. I wondered how much Chakotay had told her about the feelings he once had for me.

Then she came up to us on the dance floor and cut in, to dance with me.

Chakotay was surprised, to say the least. But then that is what he claimed to love about Seven: she was different, she didn't follow the rules, her take on things was fresh. If she wanted to dance with her Captain and mentor, he wasn't going to argue.

She placed her hands against me lightly, and I let her lead, largely because I was still a little surprised. She smelled very good, a low scent that was sharp, spicy and sweet all at once.

Up close, as we moved, I could see that she was even lovelier. This made me ashamed I had gotten so close. I hadn't bothered to have more than a wash since coming off the bridge. I was sure I smelled like the soup I'd had for dinner. She must see how much make-up I wear, the dandruff in my hair.

"You're going to make a beautiful bride, Seven," I told her, mostly as small talk.

"Thank you," she breathed, and brought me a little closer. I could feel the warmth of her legs through the skirt of her dress.

We danced until Paris cut in, and swept her away. I went off to get a drink, and to watch her eyes on my eyes from the other side of the room.

I went to leave when I had finished my drink. I had another bridge shift the next morning, to cover Chakotay's absence, and I had never thought it good for crew morale to have the Captain hanging around too long at parties. No one else could let their hair down when she was there.

I said my goodbyes, and left the holodeck.

Halfway down the corridor to the turbolift, Seven was with me, right behind my shoulder. I looked at her, she looked at me.

"I need to freshen up," she told me. "To ... change ...."

I pulled her into the turbolift and swallowed her whole.

I barely remember it now, which is a shame, because Seven is the last person I kissed. All I recall is a dizzy. hot world of warm breath and wet tongues, plunging and silky. I remember her hands on my hips, on my buttocks, pulling me against her. I remember how much stronger she was than me. Like a man, I thought, but there was nothing manly about the way she felt beneath my hands.

Her breasts were quite possibly the softest things I'd ever felt. I groped them shamelessly through the black velvet cocktail dress, pleasuring the nipples the way I liked to have my nipples pleasured. 

I was on the verge of ripping the front of that dress and bringing one to my mouth when the turbolift reached my deck.

Seven was panting wildly and desperately, afraid I was going to see sense and tell her we couldn't do this. She needn't have worried. Thank God it was such a short walk to my quarters.

I pushed her back into my neat, ordered bedroom. She knocked over the vase of dried flowers I replicated the first month we were lost. It fell to the carpeted deck and the flowers spilled out everywhere.

She unzipped her dress and dropped it to the floor for me. The garnet stone caught the light at the top of her cleavage. Her breasts were bigger in the flesh than they looked in the biosuit, flushed pink with arousal and the places I had grabbed them. I didn't know what else to do, so I ogled her.

She liked it. She arched provocatively for me, showing me the curves of her hips, the white, delicate skin of her waist, the sensational scarlet panties she had worn for Chakotay. 

The air was full of the scent of her arousal and her perfume, full of the light from her hair. Her wide eyes held mine, the lacquer of her lips shone. Her mouth looked soft and red like summer fruit.

I crushed her mouth against mine, tasting her lips and her tongue and her teeth in my hunger. My hands dug fingers into her naked skin, burrowing into her panties to hold her buttocks as I forced my hips against hers, over and over and over.

Her fingers, one set white and vulnerable and one set dull and metal, were on the fastenings of the dress uniform. Splitting the tatty material from my body, plundering under the t-shirt I wore underneath. My skin was warm and my breasts were heaving. I couldn't get enough breath to keep from feeling dizzy in this woman's arms.

Naked, she pulled me like a rag doll until I was sitting on her lap on the edge of the bed. My legs spread for her burrowing fingers, my nipples pushed up and into her mouth. She knew what she wanted. I remember only fragments of her pleasuring.

The sound of my breathing, harsh and rasping in my throat. My hips and thighs, arching and aching. Red lips and white teeth on my red nipples, agony. Her soothing me with kisses of want and hurt and need.

It took me a long time to build that night, aching and crying, to a climax. It had been so long since I had come to another person's touch. Seven rubbed me relentlessly with her wet fingers, sliding, playing, plunging inside me over and over. I whimpered into her mouth as I finally came, I remember that. Not the climax of a Captain, a sexually confident seductress. Later, it disturbed me, but I came and I clung to her, shaking and shivering and begging her not to let me go. 

After that, she clung to me, as well. We wrapped around each other, warm and moist, attached at the mouth in an endless kiss. Seven came, grinding against my thigh. I watched her face. In that moment, I didn't think we would ever separate. It was such a moment of perfection. 

Afterwards, I toyed with her nipples in my teeth, tickled her sides with my fingers.

"I'd like to see you again," I said. "Like this."

"I'm getting married in two weeks," she said. 

"I know," I told her.

"I do love Chakotay," she said. Flat as that.

She dressed in silence as I lay flat and dead on my dishevelled bed. Her big eyes stared at nothing, her jaw was firm. I never felt so naked in my life. Nevertheless, I got up and made her a cup of tea and told her it was all going to be all right. She apologised to me, over and over again. I didn't want her to do that. Right then I loved her very much, and I didn't want her to burden herself when I would be fine.

Besides, right then I believed she wouldn't stay with Chakotay forever. I didn't believe that someone who could cheat like that, two weeks before their wedding, could have a very strong relationship. I don't think I could have cheated on Mark so close to the altar.

Of course, they married, stayed together and had Jasmine a few years later. And of course, I was fine.

**4\. Once Awakening**

All the next day, my heart beats hard in my chest. Everything I touch has an undercurrent to it. I sit in my chair on the bridge, lightly touching the arms, Chakotay right at my side, never looking at me.

Seven stays off the bridge all day. She is probably in Astrometrics, but my mind sees her organising her mutiny. I wonder how many of her people are Starfleet, how many Maquis. Do those lines even factor after all these years?

Tomorrow, thanks to my "negotiations", we have shoreleave on Balamb Prime, forty-eight hours. I don't suppose we will be treated like honoured guests, but you can't have everything.

I am having the first twenty-four hours. I've given Chakotay and Seven the second, knowing Chakotay has a project he will need to finish before he joins his wife and daughter on the surface.

This is perfect. Last night I lay awake for half the night imagining it and planning it.

It's my only opportunity. I know Seven would appreciate that. It's only eight weeks until Prixin, you see. Eight weeks until "Granny" is retired from her post. We probably won't have more shore leave between now and then. It has to be now.

All day I flush hot and cold. Excited and sick and wild. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I know it, somewhere deep down. This is my crew and they're worried about me. They think I'm hampering their chances of reaching Earth in one piece. A part of my mind keeps screaming that this is Paris and Torres and Kim. My crew, for so long my children. My Seven ... for so long I loved her.

But Chakotay knows me, Seven knows me. They both know they'll have to shoot me before I give up command. Both must be prepared for that. 

They must know what they have to do, just as I do.

**5\. In The Garden Sleeps A Messenger**

Twenty years ago, Balamb Prime was attacked by the Borg. They managed to repel them, but their main city, Esthar, was destroyed. No one goes there. It's considered cursed and sacred, all at once.

I can see why.

Walking this evening among the ruins, I feel the souls of people who were assimilated here. They are cold, precise souls now, like Seven's was. All the ruins are covered with dark leaves, dark mosses. The earth is very dark. The air is very cold. Even in my long black coat, I am cold. It is funny, there is only one way to describe it.

Even though the Collective was not successful, this place is Borg.

That is how I know Seven will come here. She won't tell Chakotay or Jasmine, but she will come here like a moth to a flame. She will wander from stone to stone, touching things, her face blank. Maybe she thinks she is atoning somehow. That is probably what she would claim. 

But I know her. In these cold, empty places that are not-quite Borg, Seven is at peace.

I walk through the main city square. Some black birds howl over me, and the red light from the moons shimmers on the overgrown walls and pavements. In the middle is a statue, half destroyed. Some sort of creature not unlike a lion in its bearing, noble and ferocious. He rests on swords.

I am admiring his dead eyes when my com badge bleeps discreetly. Seven is within five hundred metres. I curl up beside the beast and wait for her.

She looks very young in the moonlight, kind of the way she used to all those years ago when I'd spend hours watching her regenerate. As I thought, she is moving from place to place, her hands on everything. She likes to touch what the Borg have touched, what they have destroyed.

In my pocket is a weapon that I took last week from the dignitary that I kidnapped. Unmistakeable, a common piece of hardware easily obtained on Balamb. It's how they beat the Borg, horribly, destroying every nanoprobe in their blood. I intend to murder Seven with it, to keep my ship.

The thought is huge in my head, too big for me to think about. So I won't.

Seven moves around the square, her fingers brushing one of the stone walls. I am terrified she'll hear my panting, smell my excited sweat. My fingers curl around the weapon and hold it.

She turns around, dreamy, and I step out in front of her, three metres away. I point the weapon at her with a steady hand. It looks black and matt and mean in my ghost of a hand. She looks at me.

"Hello, Seven," I say, and fire it.

She hits the ivy on her back. There is already blood in her eyes, and her thighs are apart as she arches. I think she is in pain, but she doesn't make a sound. She can't. Her eyes don't look at mine. Her skin is collapsing. It looks like she is being eaten inside out.

It makes me nauseous, so I walk away while she dies. Stare at the lion some more, trying to ignore the chemical smell of Seven's disintegration. I wish she had screamed, made this more real. I don't think I'm going to have a single sleepless night.

When I finally look back, I think she is dead. Part of her arm has fallen right off, and the Borg parts are sparking and moving. I expect to feel differently, watching her dead, but really, I don't. This beautiful place has seen many dead Borg. It feels very right that I should do this here.

I pick up her hand and watch the motors wind down, and the servos stop working.  
This was the last hand to make me come, I think. All those years ago. I remember its touch, almost.

I know I am crazy when I put the hand in my coat and take it with me to Voyager.

**6\. Nothing Important Happened Today**

Today, it was Prixin. A sombre gathering after the murder of one of our beloved officers eight weeks ago by Balambian separatists. I made a speech about how our family was no longer complete.

Chakotay held hands with Jasmine, and thanked me. His tears were never far from his pinched, miserable face. Jasmine was utterly white.

Harry and Quistis were there, too. I knew from watching them in his quarters earlier that his stiff little gait was the result of a large butt-plug. B'Elanna ate practically nothing and left early. Tom chewed the inside of his face. 

Without Seven, they are all pathetic.

There have been no more secret meetings. All of that, it seems, is over now. Granny rules the roost again.

Only Tuvok looks at me with new eyes. He conducted Seven's forensic testing, so I think he knows. He isn't stupid. 

I think he will be watching. He better had.

After the party is over, I go back to my quarters and unlock the drawers. I open the box, I unwrap the linen swathes around it. Then I spend the night alone with Seven. Seven touches me.


End file.
